California Trend by County: 1976-2012

[ElectionsGuy]

These are trends, so I wrote down how much more Carter or Ford the county was compared to the state in 1976, did the same with Romney and Obama in 2012, and then calculated the difference. Again, trends compared to the state to erase any state advantage by any candidates. Here are the categories and an example county. The most left trending place was San Francisco with a 34 point Democratic trend, and the most right trending place was Lassen County with a 76 point Republican trend!! I will answer any specific county requests. Los Angeles (a quarter of California's population) had a 15 point Democratic trend. Because of its large population, I thought it would be important to say since there's a large difference between 10 points and 20 points. San Benito had no trend.

D+0-9.9 (Mendocino)
D+10-19.9 (Los Angeles)
D+20-29.9 (Santa Clara)
D+30-39.9 (San Francisco)

R+0-9.9 (Orange)
R+10-19.9 (San Bernardino)
R+20-29.9 (Fresno)
R+30-39.9 (Kern)
R+40-49.9 (El Dorado)
R+50 and over (Shasta)



Just to be clear, this is a state trend. So its measuring how counties have moved relative to the state. If this was a nationwide trend county map, things would be a lot bluer.

[Hydera]

Obviously Coastal California trending more democratic had a lot to do with the hippie migration of 1960s college kids to the coast + Asian/latino immigration(two currently strong democrat voting blocs) to those areas.

But Central California used to lean democratic compared to coastal California until the post-1960 voterbase switch between the parties.

I wonder if that lean democratic voting patterns had something to do with the tons of people with southern roots that moved there in the aftermath of the dust bowl and some of those habits were passed to their kids. Only to switch as the rural vs urban, southern vs Other. Started to become a thing.

[/]

Nice job! You're using the non-Atlas color scheme, though, right?

[ElectionsGuy]

Nice job! You're using the non-Atlas color scheme, though, right?

Yes

[Mr. Illini]

Good job! Surprised @ Orange County